FrontRow's Adam Donaghey posted an account of the final day of this past weekend's Texas Frightmare convention, which included a Carrie panel made up of Piper Laurie, Nancy Allen, and P.J. Soles. "When asked how they originally perceived the script," writes Donaghey, "the cast of Carrie all agreed they thought it was satirical. Piper Laurie remarked that she’d even prepared some physical comedy bits, including pulling herself around the set by her hair. Director Brian De Palma’s response was something to the nature of, 'No, you can’t do that – you’ll get a laugh!'" Donaghey adds that "Carrie‘s major claim to fame is that it was a benchmark for genre films receiving Academy Award noms. '[Carrie] lead the charge,” said P. J. Soles, “Not because it was a Stephen King film, but because of De Palma’s vision.'"

MORETZ: PEIRCE & DE PALMA ARE GOOD FRIENDS"THEY'RE TALKING ABOUT THE MOVIE... WE'RE TAKING A LOT OF HIS NOTES," BUT REALLY GOING BACK TO THE BOOKIn an MTV Movies Blog video posted today, Chloe Moretz tells Josh Horowitz that the Carrie remake, being directed by Kimberly Peirce, is getting input from Brian De Palma himself. Asked if she has seen De Palma's version, Moretz replied, "Yeah, I saw the De Palma movie actually during... I was making Let Me In at the time. And that's when I first saw it. No, I mean, De Palma's movie is absolutely amazing, and we're definitely taking... you know, Kim is actually really good friends with De Palma, and, you know, they're talking about the movie and everything, and they're good friends. So we're taking a lot of his notes and stuff, but what we're really doing is we're taking the book, and we're breaking the book down, and we're putting a lot of elements from the book into our story. So it's... it's more of like a Black Swan version of it. So you really see the mythology in the character, and you really see everything going on with Carrie, and it's darker."

MORETZ: DE PALMA'S 'CARRIE' ONE OF BEST MOVIES EVERSAYS NEW VERSION WILL BE MORE PSYCHOLOGICAL, LIKE 'BLACK SWAN'Coming Soon's Silas Lesnick got to discuss the upcoming remake of Carrie with Chloe Moretz, who is taking on the lead role in Kimberly Peirce's new version. Here is what Moretz had to say about the Brian De Palma version, and the new take on it:

I start that June 1st... It's going to be very well done. I don't want to jinx it, but [Peirce] is a genius, genius, genius director. I would never do it with someone that I don't trust. I trust her more than a lot of the directors I've worked with. She's the right woman for the job.

I'm actually not looking at the original, even though De Palma's movie was one of the best movies ever made. It's completely iconic and I'm proud to be able to be doing a retooling of it. We're kind of going off the book. It's darker and much more psychological. More Black Swan. You're really looking into her mind and it really looks into the relationship of Margaret and Carrie. It's set in modern time, so it's a lot different.

Lesnick got Moretz to talk about the clothes her Carrie will be wearing: "It's something that's very different from me. It's an out of body thing. I'm becoming a totally different person for it. I'm letting go of all of my self-esteem issues and just kind of going into it. You have to."

And finally, the article delves into the fan-made poster art pictured here:

Although shooting won't begin for another month, Moretz and Peirce have already been impressed with the outpouring of fan support and, in particular, the fan-made poster pictured above. Designed by Pierre-Luc Boucher, the teaser was posted to his Deviant Art page and soon found its way to Peirce.

"That was a cool poster!" Moretz laughs. "Kim sent that to me. She said, 'Oh my god, you've got to look at this. It's really, really, really cool!' We both felt so pumped. Now we're chomping at the bit to get in there."

'CARRIE' REMAKE TO USE 'FOUND FOOTAGE' FORMATAS JULIANNE MOORE GETS CLOSER TO TAKING ON MOTHER OF A ROLEA month after Chloe Moretz was announced as the lead in MGM's new version of Carrie, Deadline's Mike Fleming reports that the studio has made a formal offer to Julianne Moore to take on the role of Carrie's mother, Margaret White. Meanwhile, according to Peter Hall at Movies.com, MGM's CEO Roger Birnbaum visted his alma mater, the University of Denver, this week, as a guest in the school's film history and production classes. During one of the talks, Birnbaum specifically used the phrase "found footage" while discussing the new version of Carrie, which is being directed by Kimberly Peirce, with a screenplay by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa that is said to cling closer to Stephen King's novel than Brian De Palma's film version. Hall explains nicely how the found footage format would tie in with the novel:

Now, before you get out your anti-found footage pitch forks, this shouldn't be that surprising. King's original novel is interspersed with various "official" documents recounting what happened on Carrie's deadly prom night (a writing technique called epistolary, which is basically the literary equivalent of found footage), so if Aguirre-Sacasa's script is indeed going back to the source material, the film focusing on "interviews with the survivors of the prom incident" makes perfect sense. It also doesn't necessarily mean Carrie will be filled with first-person POV found footage as we traditionally know - though the person who posted the recap did confirm to us that Birnbaum specifically used the words "found footage" - but is simply using recorded interviews as a framing device much like the book used newspaper clippings, which actually means Peirce's film will have more in common with the 2002 made-for-TV Carrie movie starring Angela Bettis than De Palma's film.

SPACEK BIO DUE MAY 1ST'CARRIE' EXCERPT IN CURRENT ISSUE OF ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLYThe Sissy Spacek memoir My Extraordinary Ordinary Life will be published on May 1. The book was written by Spacek with Maryanne Vollers. The current issue of Entertainment Weekly (the summer movie preview double issue with Batman and Catwoman on the cover) includes an exclusive excerpt from the book in which Spacek tells the story of working on Brian De Palma's Carrie. There's not really anything new here that hasn't been told elsewhere (Spacek having to convince De Palma she was the right choice for Carrie; De Palma explaining to Spacek that discovering the blood in the shower should be like getting hit by a mack truck; husband Jack Fisk helping her grasp the right sense of shock by describing how he got run over by a car, etc.), but it is told in a clear and compelling narrative, filtered by Vollers. The excerpt concludes with this:

The script called for all the high school girls to be partially nude as they romped around the locker room at the end of gym class-- a fantasy scenario that only a man could dream up. Some of the girls were balking. That is, until we all watched the rushes from my shower scene.

I had it written in my contract that I would not appear fully nude on screen. But that was a trick of the editing room; the camera saw everything. Every time Brian shot another take of the shower scene, the clapper board was placed in front of me. And each time the board was pulled away, the camera was right where my contract said it couldn't be. Now, I'm not a shy person-- you can't be in this business!-- but by the time the rushes were over, I didn't know if I should laugh or crawl under my chair. I decided to laugh.

"Thanks a lot, Brian!" I said, as sarcastically as I could.

After that, Brian later told me, the female cast members stopped complaining about their topless locker scene.

Spacek is interviewed about the memoir at The Hook. The book is also likely to have stories about making De Palma's Phantom Of The Paradise, as Spacek worked as a set designer on that film with Fisk, who was the production designer on Phantom, and the art director on Carrie.

"Never been so happy in my life! Thank you Kim Pierce and thank u MGM for the chance of a lifetime i will never forget!" Deadline: "Moretz didn’t meet with Peirce until last weekend. She got the job immediately... Insiders said that once they make Moretz’s deal, they will focus on landing the psycho mom and supporting cast and they will shoot this year." Remake will be filmed in and around Toronto. Planning for July start date.

'CARRIE' PAPERBACK ON SALE AT CENTIPEDE PRESSLIMITED EDITION HARDCOVER SIGNED BY AUTHOR & SCREENWRITER ALSO STILL AVAILABLEJoe Aisneberg's in-depth study of Brian De Palma's Carrie is a must-read, must-have for any De Palma fan, and a paperback version is now on sale for $17 at Centipede Press. The 100-copy limited edition hardcover, signed by Aisenberg and Carrie screenwriter Lawrence D. Cohen, is also still available.

As I reported before, the book features extensive interviews with De Palma and Cohen that alone would be a must for De Palma fans, but Aisenberg's deep analysis into every shot of Carrie makes the book a joy to read. Aisenberg has read just about everything written about Carrie, and offers a critical look at those writings, while also gleaning from them useful perspectives on the film. He offers an exhaustive account of Stephen King's conceptualization of and writing of his original novel, as well as King's alternating views of Carrie (both book and film) throughout the years.

This naturally leads into a chapter on how the movie was made from the novel, with Cohen and De Palma providing key details, such as how producer Paul Monash had originally hired a young woman (no one seems to recall her name) to write the screenplay. After her first draft made Monash very nervous (because, as Cohen says in the interview, "it just wasn't good"), Cohen, having loved King's book and having a very strong idea about what the film of it should be, went on a three-week marathon in which he did nothing but eat, drink, and sleep Carrie. There is also a well-considered background on De Palma leading up to the making of Carrie, even quoting the interview De Palma did with the now-defunct web site "Le Paradis de Brian De Palma" to illustrate what Aisenberg calls "a rare romantic insight into De Palma's notion of film":

"The great movies that I remember are the ones that went right into my subconscious, and I don't know why they obsess me, or why I keep thinking about them, or why in a postmodern way I keep trying to recreate them, like Vertigo, for instance. It's just something that's inexplicable. These images have taken seed in your subconscious, and you can't get them the hell out... There are a few great directors that have been able to do it, and that's why we never forget those movies. Aisenberg allows insights such as this to color his analysis of Carrie throughout the study.

These initial chapters are well-researched and fascinating, and then the book really takes off when Aisenberg begins his scene-by-scene analysis, illustrated with black-and-white frames from the film itself. Incorporating an author interview with Betty Buckley in addition to the others mentioned, Aisenberg weaves his research in with the fabric of his analysis, producing a text that is as entertaining as it is insightful. Aisenberg deftly illustrates how the opening volleyball scene establishes Carrie’s theme of competition, which is presented most prominently by the film’s ongoing juxtapositions between Sue and Chris, but also between Margaret and Miss Collins, with Carrie (and, perhaps, “the boys”) stuck in the middle. Like the film itself, Aisenberg keeps moving forward, stopping to consider moments such as when Sue walks into the background of the scene in which Margaret pays a visit to Sue’s mother, and giving that moment just the right touch of curious investigation before linking the scene directly to Orson Wells’ Citizen Kane:

As Mrs. Snell hands over a contribution of ten dollars to be done with Margaret, which clearly annoys the religious woman, a further visual detail complicates the dramatic tension. Through the doorway behind them beyond the pink hallway where Mrs. Snell answered the phone is a sliver of another doorframe (frames-within-frames [Aisenberg highlights these throughout]) in which Sue appears and silently hovers. While most films would probably cut around at this point to make all the characters’ stakes obvious, De Palma expertly stages things on the cheap so that viewers can connect the dramatic dots between things for themselves, imparting to Sue hints of guilty feeling that will shortly lead her to atone for her actions.

When I asked De Palma about this scene, as well as other moments in which he makes use of background and foreground actions, or places things independent of one another on the left- and right-hand sides of the screen, De Palma described the effect in musical terms as “contrapuntal,” with roots in the deep-focus arrangements of Citizen Kane, a film that also lets scenes run on without too many cuts. Indeed, the staging here recalls an early moment in Kane specifically, wherein little Charles’s mother transfers legal custody of the boy to a lawyer. Up front, Kane’s mother (Agnes Moorehead) sits at a table signing over guardianship of the boy to her cold attorney, despite her husband’s protest, while deep in the background, through a window, the boy can clearly be seen playing in the snow enjoying a childhood which has already slipped away. Carrie reverses the terms: the child figure hidden in the faraway depths of the frame is the guilty party, while those near at hand are still “innocent” of life-changing events that have taken place (thus Sue’s image is appropriately blurred and ambiguous).

Later on, in his analysis of the prom scene, Aisenberg lays out very nicely Carrie’s deliberate echoes of David Lean’s The Bridge On The River Kwai, and elsewhere delves into the film’s inspirations from John Boorman’s Deliverance and Akira Kurosawa’s Throne Of Blood. Regarding the moment of shock just after the pig’s blood spills over Carrie, and the film shows Carrie’s viewpoint in a kaleidoscope effect, Aisenberg states that it recalls “some of the overdone visual distortions and expressionistic devices of silent movies, such as in F.W. Murnau’s The Last Laugh (1924), whose themes, incidentally, parallel Carrie’s enough to compare them, I think.” Aisenberg also compares this moment in Carrie to a similar subjective visualization of shock from the 1958 version of The Fly.

I stated above that Aisenberg has read just about everything related to Carrie, and, well, he has listened to just about everything, too. The book includes bits of information throughout from the very rare Criterion laserdisc edition of Carrie, which included audio commentary by Cohen and Laurent Bouzereau. At one point, Aisenberg also serves up a quote from a recent Raising Cain-focused episode of the online radio show Movie Geeks United, in which editor Paul Hirsch discusses the music for the final dream sequence of Carrie:

The temp score for the nightmare was Albinoni’s Adagio for Organ and Strings, which was the saddest music I could find for Amy Irving laying the flowers on Carrie’s grave. And then I found a deliberately arrhythmic moment. I mean I lined the music so there was an arrhythmic moment when the hand shoots up out of the ground, and for that I used the main title from Sisters, which starts with an anvil strike, a sharp metallic sound just at the moment when the first rock is dislodged, you know, starts to move, and the hand comes shooting out. So you have this soft sweet, sad organ and strings interrupted at a very unexpected moment by a loud anvil strike guaranteed to startle anyone. So Pino [Donaggio] just copied that.

Aisenberg’s Carrie expertise makes for an eye-opening book, and provides a necessary credibility when he goes for the gusto and declares that both De Palma and Hirsch are wrong when they insist that the split-screen section at the prom does not work. “The scene is thrilling, marvelously realized,” states Aisenberg, adding that “the use of split-screen serves several purposes.” After quoting De Palma explaining his original rationale for conceiving the sequence in split-screen as a way to avoid simply cutting from Carrie to things moving around, Aisenberg explains why he thinks the sequence works so well:

Indeed, [De Palma’s] solution seems an ingenious way to dramatize Carrie’s power in action—she looks here, she looks there, and on the other side of the screen objects do her bidding. The effect is heightened by the stunning way Carrie’s face, at one point, slides from the right side of the screen to the left. De Palma’s frames and expertly montaged juxtapositions throughout the movie suggest irrational lines of influence hard at work between things; the split-screen liberalizes it. Also, from a practical point of view, this device makes the most of relatively little in the way of special effects-induced chaos, since all that’s really happening during the first part of the sequence is that the lights change and a fire extinguisher hose stands up like a penis-snake and starts spraying everybody. As with the volleyball game, where a single unbroken take was employed by the director so that the audience could see it being played in real time, De Palma may have instinctually hoped that by combining as many images on screen as possible he could trick viewers into thinking they were seeing al the destruction happen before their eyes.

Split-screen has stylistic-thematic significance as well. Throughout the film characters have been shown acting on several contradictory levels in bifocal shots, that oppose but mirror one another. Once the split perspectives come together in Carrie’s ultimate degradation, the traumatic force literally breaks the image itself in half, and a new doubling of the viewer’s experience sets in. The audience sees exactly how Carrie is misperceiving the situation in her crazed state, believing there to be a much bigger conspiracy at work than there really was—one including everybody, even Miss Collins.

Other tidbits from the book's De Palma interview include: a brief discussion about the two songs written for the film, one of which producer Paul Monash (whose wife wrote the lyrics to both) wanted to run over the opening credits (De Palma says he fought tooth and nail against that); De Palma switching cinematographers after initial filming around the school because he did not like the way Isador Mankofsky was lighting the girls (De Palma didn't like the way they looked); and how after figuring out how Margaret would be killed, they decided to go back and shoot scenes of Carrie in the closet, for which set designer Jack Fisk created the haunting Saint Sebastion figure "with all the arrows in it."

There are at least two more books about Carrie in the works, including a monograph by British critic Neil Mitchell, and a making of. These will undoubtedly be marvelous additions to the ongoing dialogue about this great film, but will in no way displace Aisenberg’s book. Aisenberg’s personal take on Carrie, informed by his exhaustive research, combined with the exclusive interviews with De Palma, Cohen , and Buckley, should make this a permanent fixture of any De Palma fan’s (and movie fan’s) bookshelf.